THE STATE SURVIVES SECESSION.

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unwisely, or put it in antagonism to the federal government, the state government is dissolved, the state constitution is abrogated, and the state is left, in fact and in form, de jure and de facto, in anarchy, except so far as the federal government may rightfully intervene. This seems to be substantially the view of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Boutwell]. He enforces the same position, but he does not use the same language.

"I submit that these gentlemen do not see with their usual clearness of vision. If by a plague or other visitation of God, every officer of a state government should at the same moment die, so that not a single person clothed with official power should remain, would the state government be destroyed? Not at all for the moment it would not be administered, but as soon as officers were elected and assumed their respective duties, it would be instantly in full force and vigor.

"If these states are out of the Union, their state governments are still in force unless otherwise changed. And their citizens are to the federal government as foreigners, and it has in relation to them the same rights, and none other, as it had in relation to British subjects in the war of 1812, or to the Mexicans in 1846. Whatever may be the true relation of the seceded states, the federal government derives no power in relation to them or their citizens from the provision of the Constitution now under consideration, but in the one case derives all its power from the duty of enforcing the supreme law of the land,' and in the other to declare war.

6

999

Thus Pendleton declared that the seceded states

were still in the Union, once a state always a state, and that the federal government derived no power to reconstruct them from the clause in the Constitution guaranteeing them a republican form of government,1 inasmuch as having had that form in the first instance, and that form being unchanged because it was unchangeable by the act of secession, these states presented nothing upon which this clause could operate, and was therefore inoperative. If this were not so, and the states were out of the Union, then the doctrine of Thaddeus Stevens, that these states were subject to the war powers of the federal government, was correct. This led him to discuss the claim of Congress to absolute power, which he did as follows:

6

"The second proposition of the gentleman from Maryland is this. I use his language: That clause vests in the Congress of the United States a plenary, supreme, unlimited political jurisdiction, paramount over courts, subject only to the judgment of the people of the United States, embracing within its scope every legislative measure necessary and proper to make it effectual; and what is necessary and proper the Constitution refers in the first place to our judg ment, subject to no revision but that of the people.'

"The gentleman states his case too strongly. The duty imposed on Congress is doubtless important, but Congress has no right to use a means of performing it forbidden by the Constitution, no matter how necessary or proper it might be thought to be. But, sir, this doctrine is monstrous. It has no foundation in the Constitution. It subjects all the states to the will of Congress; it places their institutions at the feet of

1 Article IV. sect. 4.

CONGRESS A DESPOT.

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Congress. It creates in Congress an absolute, unqualified despotism. It asserts the power of Congress in changing the state governments to be 'plenary, supreme, unlimited''subject only to revision by the people of the whole United States.' The rights of the people of the state are nothing; their will is nothing. Congress first decides; the people of the whole Union revise. My own state of Ohio is liable at any moment to be called in question for her constitution. She does not permit negroes to vote. If this doctrine be true, Congress may decide this exclusion is antirepublican, and by force of arms abrogate that constitution and set up another, permitting negroes to vote. From that decision of Congress there is no appeal to the people of Ohio, but only to the people of Massachusetts, and New York, and Wisconsin, at the election of Representatives; and if a majority cannot be elected to reverse the decision, the people of Ohio must submit. Woe be to the day when that doctrine shall be established, for from its centralized despotism we will appeal to the sword! ..

"This bill, the avowed doctrine of its supporters, sweeps all [the rights of the states] instantly away. It substitutes despotism for self-government; despotism the more severe because vested in a numerous Congress."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE CONGRESSIONAL PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION.

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The Congressional Plan of Reconstruction- Debate in the Senate Madison on the constitutional guarantee of a republican form of government - Carlile's remarks upon this guarantee The President withholds his assent to the Reconstruction Bill — His proclamation thereon, and the Manifesto of Senator Wade and Representative Henry Winter Davis.

NOT until July first, though it had been reported on the twenty-seventh of May, was this bill called up in the Senate, when Brown, of Missouri, offered an amendment 1 to the effect that the inhabitants of any state which had been proclaimed to be in rebellion should be incapable of casting a vote for presidential electors or of electing Senators or Representatives in Congress, until the insurrection was abandoned. Wade led off in the debate which opened, and in the course of his remarks he said: "What is the relation that these seceded states hold to the general government now? Gentlemen differ widely on that subject. It is a most important question, however, to be ascertained and declared by Congress, for the Executive ought not to be permitted to handle this great question to his own liking. It does not belong, under the Constitution, to the President to prescribe the rule, and it is a base abandonment of our own powers and our own duties to cast this great principle upon the

1 Cong. Globe, 3449.

WADE'S SPEECH.

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decision of the executive branch of the government. It belongs to us; and the House of Representatives, in the performance of their duty, have in my judgment wisely performed this great function. I know very well that the President from the best motives undertook to fix a rule upon which he would admit these states back into the Union. It was not upon any principle of republicanism; it would not have guaranteed to the states a republican form of government, because he prescribed the rule to be that when one tenth of the population would take a certain oath and agree to come back into the Union, they might come in as states. When we consider that in the light of American principle, to say the least of it, it was absurd. The idea that a state shall take upon itself the great privilege of self-government when there is only one tenth of the people that can stand by the principle is most anti-republican, anomalous, and entirely subversive of the great principles that underlie all our state governments and the general goverment. Majorities must rule, and until majorities can be found loyal and trustworthy for state government, they must be governed by a stronger hand. It is a necessity imposed upon the general government by the Constitution itself."

Such was what a Republican Senator thought of the Presidential Plan of Reconstruction. Senator Wade avowed his conviction that "once a state of this Union, always a state; you cannot by wrong or violence displace the rights of anybody or disorganize the state," but he concluded from the constitutional clause of guarantee that "if a portion of the people undertake to overthrow their government and set up